The 2013 Tech 50: Steven Scopellite

The trend — or hype — of cloud computing has been building for several years, yet many corporations are still struggling to understand and capitalize on it. Goldman Sachs Group first adopted the utility-based processing model in-house, making use of a so-called private cloud for its derivatives business, ten years ago. Today cloud’s “cost-effectiveness is showing its face,” says Steven Scopellite, a 27-year veteran of the New York investment bank who has been CIO since 2008. “A year ago I wouldn’t have said that.” The 48-year-old is referring to a “hybrid cloud” that combines internal, bespoke infrastructure with external, public clouds as needed. The bank can better prepare for high-volume days and “off-load the technical sophistication we once had to build in-house,” Scopellite says. The favorable economics are compounded as big, fixed-cost data centers are replaced with highly scalable, energy-efficient modular units that the CIO likens to “a data center in a box.” A practical application is dynamic capital and liquidity calculations. After making “significant investments to scale our risk platform and develop a system that is common across all asset classes” and taking advantage of cloud efficiencies, “we have more visibility into how a particular transaction will affect capital ratios,” Scopellite explains.